I'm not much into MTB and I've just got this Avanti Ridge Rider to mess about on, but the forks are just awful. They are RST Omega SLs with (supposedly) 100mm travel and a lock-out on the RHS leg. OK, the bike is not top end quality, but do the forks have to be this bad ?

Essentially the spring (I think there is a spring in one side only) feels too heavy. The pre-load adjuster doesn't seem to make any difference, so I took off the top cap to see what the problem is and, lo and behold, the reason the adjuster doesn't make any difference is because it doesn't do anything ! Nothin' ! It's just there for show ! You wind it around and nothing changes inside because there's nothing to change-at least that's the way it looks to me. Pathetic.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone knows of a source of alternative springs. Is there any degree of interchangability ? I guess the option is just to get a decent set of forks, but it seems a shame to toss these ones out if the spring could just be changed to make them more effective.

The simplest - and likely cheapest - option is to watch the 'bay for a cheap second hand fork.

I'm currently riding a borrowed MTB, and the fork was starting to feel tired. It's an old Manitou fork, and a service kit would cost me $40 plus postage from the US.

I decided to just replace the fork. New but iffy forks start at around $70 if you look around. I found a similar fork on Ebay and got it for less than $20. Big improvement for a small amount of money and an easy job to swap the two forks around.

Bin the RST....don't bother trying to re-spring it. It won't fix the generic problem which is that the fork is 1.5 kg heavier than it needs to be.

You have two viable options: the first is a rigid fork like the Kinesis alloy jobbie that I used on my old Learsport to replace an RST; the second is a budget squishy like the Rockshox XC32. The former will set you back around $120 while the latter will cost another $100-$150 on top of that. Personally, going rigid is cheaper and will make the front end much much lighter...

SR-Suntour XCR-RL as good as the above mentioned RockShox, and should only be $130 shipped. Will kick the RST all over the shop and even makes some quite spendy forks look silly.

The XCT-V2 is junk though.

So we get the leaders we deserve and we elect, we get the companies and the products that we ask for, right? And we have to ask for different things. – Paul Gildingbut really, that's rubbish. We get none of it because the choices are illusory.

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